Pilsen Wellness Center, Inc.

The Pilsen-Little Village Community Mental Health Center, Inc. d/b/a Pilsen Wellness Center , Inc. (“PWC”) provides comprehensive, holistic human services to individuals and families through culturally sensitive education, prevention, treatment, and recovery interventions. These services are geared toward supporting family relationships, facilitating community empowerment, and stimulating economic development. The Center strives to become an internationally recognized catalyzing force in culturally competent human services by providing a seamless array of outcome based services that seek to preserve and support family health, stimulate economic development, and foster community empowerment through wellness. Pilsen Wellness Center's engagement with youth and families is longstanding and multifaceted. Formally incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation in June 1975, the organization has historically served the predominantly Latino-origin communities of Pilsen (Lower West Side) and Little Village (South Lawndale) in Chicago, and has since expanded the original service areas to include Archer Heights, New City, Brighton Park, Gage Park, McKinley Park, Grand Boulevard, South Shore, and South Chicago as well as the suburban communities of Cicero, Berwyn, Stone Park, and Melrose Park, Illinois. During these 40 years of experience serving local communities, PWC has established an extensive network of external partnerships, while consistently expanding internal programming to meet client needs. With 15 programming sites located throughout the Chicagoland area, PWC has deep roots in the community. The organization's philosophic approach to general service delivery considers the traditions, values and culture of its program participants, and therefore prioritizes the employing of bilingual and multicultural individuals. This diversity ensures that every member of the target communities can immediately receive services in their own language, with few, if any, cultural barriers between community members and front-line staff. The Center's expertise rests on its ability to grasp the implications of acculturation and how life experiences are encoded in language. Facilitating client access to the “emotional” aspect of a problem through the language in which it was experienced is a fundamental treatment component. Language and its subtleties, strongly related to identity, and expertise in treating acculturation difficulties are a hallmark of the agency's services provision. Pilsen Wellness Center remains one of the few community-based, not-for-profit organizations with a vast array of service options, offering a comprehensive array of youth, mental health, substance abuse, alternative secondary education, early intervention, and HIV prevention programming. The agency values the uniqueness of the bicultural person and provides culturally sensitive services to a multicultural population with limited financial resources. This translates into supportive programs that appreciate how language and culture influence therapeutic strategies. This in-depth understanding facilitates a process of healing for participants by taking into consideration how levels of acculturation and the immigrant experience impact treatment services. Common among many Latinos, this experience remains one of the most stressful events a family can undergo. The Center's staff helps families address challenges within the acculturation process, as well as behavioral, emotional, and adjustment issues. Throughout its history, the organization's mission has remained constant: to provide quality human services to economically disadvantaged children and families in the targeted service areas. PWC upholds a tradition of excellence and has received recognition of its outstanding services and programming. Eleven PWC programs were awarded a prestigious three-year CARF accreditation award for the period 2013-2016, for demonstrating superior standards of care and excellence in outcomes. In addition to its CARF certification as a qualified provider of rehabilitation services, Pilsen Wellness Center, Inc. is a licensed, Medicaid provider of Mental Health and Addictions Treatment services and is certified by the Illinois Department of Human Services.